FASCICULI MALATENSES 83 
he only uses his command of the elements to secure good weather for friends 
at sea, and only curses sheep and goats that stray in his garden. 
Prohibitions 
Like several other classes among the Malays whose work leads them 
into places regarded as the special haunts of spirits, the Patam fishermen 
consider themselves bound by certain rules and prohibitions, to transgress 
which would bring sickness or misfortune upon them. Their word for such 
restrictions is pantang 1 —a term also used by the other classes referred to, and 
translated by Skeat and other authorities on Malay folk-lore, ‘taboo.* I have 
thought it better, however, in spite of this precedent, to make use of no such 
technical term as £ taboo,* which has a very definite and restricted meaning 
in ethnography, slightly different, perhaps, from that attached to pantang in the 
Malay Peninsula ; and I have therefore adopted the word * prohibition,* as 
being less liable to misconstruction. 
If a death occurs in a fishing village, no boat from that village must go 
to sea on the day following, and no one must set out on a land journey ; the 
reason being that the boat or the traveller would have no luck, and would 
probably meet with some disaster. No fisherman must whistle when starting 
for the day*s work or at sea, for fear that he should call the wrong wind ; 
although, curiously enough, whistling is believed to bring a favourable breeze 
at Trang, on the opposite side of the Peninsula. When travelling between 
the mouth of the Trang River and the islands off the coast I have heard the 
method resorted to, much to the surprise of a Patani man who accompanied 
me, and who remarked that boatmen in his country would never have dared 
to summon the wind in this way, but would have muttered instead the 
following charm :— 
* Chtum ! Cbium ! Daun Glam . 
Pangil angin ! Pangil angin / * 
(Kiss ! Kiss ! O leaves of the Glam tree. Call the wind ! Call the wind I). 
The Glam tree is one whose leaves are made to rustle by the slightest breeze, 
like those of the aspen ; but they are here regarded as causing the wind by 
their rustling. The whistling of the Trang boatmen was a very accurate 
imitation of the breeze rushing through the cordage of a boat, and whistling of 
any more elaborate kind appears to be unknown among the Malays of the 
Peninsula as an amusement or mode of musical expression. It is very 
interesting to find a simple little piece of sympathetic magic of the kind 
regarded in two such different aspects in different parts of the same country, 
though believed to be efficacious in both. 
I. Locally pronounced much if a Frenchman would pronounce feirttaia. 
